Moving abroad sends our senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell into overdrive. In this month’s NSEW offering, we explore an element of expat life through one or more of the five senses. In Sound Check, Yours Truly in the Netherlands (North) finds that it is distinctive sounds that remind me where I am. In Bottling the Essence of Beach LifeRussell in Australia (South) walks us through the multitude of sensory experiences found at the beach. In Tastes That Tell Our Stories, below, Erica in Japan (East) admits that she does, in fact, cry at Cheerios and roasted chicken. And in Nasal Manoeuvres, Maria in Canada (West) knows that no one knows France like her nose knows France.

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Tastes That Tell Our Stories

by Erica Knecht

We were still rootless. Our belongings were somewhere in the Sea of Japan, and we had yet to find an apartment. There wasn’t even a contender. And, like that, in the hotel bathroom, I found out that I was pregnant.

After the initial excitement and joy and wonder had a chance to settle in my bones, my mind turned to the practicalities of rearing a child in Japan. Doctor visits, baby equipment varied and sundry, and, of course, food.

There were no Cheerios in Japan, and so I cried. Distraught, because, obviously, Cheerios are what babies eat. They are the first finger foods. They are the snacks in a Ziplock bag, extracted from the bottom of a purse at just the right moment to that stave off a tantrum. They are the breakfast of choice, plink plink plink, served up by fathers, morning cartoons on, but not too loud, while mothers lie in on a rare lazy Saturday. They’re nutty, toasty, and with a vague sense of healthfulness. And I couldn’t fathom raising my girl without them.

We scoured the Internet until finally my husband found a workaround, and ordered several sunny yellow boxes of cereal, personal import, straight from America via Korea, at about twenty dollars a box. Because Canadian babies eat Cheerios. And my girl is Canadian, though born in Japan, and so it is her birthright: tiny o’s on a high chair tray.

But when her pincer grasp was finally firm and accurate, she rejected the o’s. With an arm extended across the table, she swept them away, wheels scattering. Cheerios were a relic of my childhood, not hers. They were part of my story, not my girl’s.

Food and culture are indivisible. “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are,” said Jean Anthelme Brillant-Savarin. And he was right. Food is a marker of identity, a carrier of culture. Is there a stronger expression of Americana than, for example, a table laden with a turkey, cranberry sauce and green bean casserole?

Culinary traditions carry meaning and cultural significance so great that they just won’t be abandoned. Festival days center around food; noodles served on Chinese New Year signify a long life, and Dia de los Muertos is heralded with sugar skulls and Pan de Muerto. Significant life events are marked by traditional tastes. A first birthday can not be celebrated without cake. Miyuk gook, a Korean seaweed soup, is served to a a new mother to fortify her body after the grueling labour of bringing her child into the world. Tastes mark the seasons and the days. Breakfast without bread would be unimaginable in France, just as a winter without fondue would be unthinkable in Switzerland.

Immigrants and expats alike retain their culinary traditions {http://www.jneb.org/article/S1499-4046(11)00528-8/abstract} long after they have been assimilated into their host country. We might adopt the gestures of our new home {Physical Souvenirs}; our vocabulary slowly expands to include words in our new language. We may even settle and have kids who themselves become owners of the new culture. But still, long after the children have forgotten their mother language, the taste of their mother’s kitchen is still fresh on their tongue.

My first weeks in Japan were a sybaritic buffet of curry rice, gyudon, ramen and gyoza. I was hungry for new tastes, subtle flavours, richness, and sauce. But then it all began to turn my stomach. An errand to the 7/11, with its oden bubbling away on the counter would leave me reeling, nauseous and heaving on the side of the road. Morning sickness, manageable in most circumstances, sidelined me when I came face to face with foreign foods. I wanted food from home. What I knew, what was comforting. The image of a chicken, simple, flavoured with thyme and lemon, would make me weep with sadness and yearning, but also with joy. Because a roast chicken is a thing of beauty: it speaks of winter evenings, a family at a round wooden table, a fire in the wood stove. Children whispering secret wishes, and a wishbone that snaps.

Our foods, the tastes we call home, bind us to our origins, and they also tell our story. Upon arrival in new lands, we are giddy with possibility and adventure. We sample everything. A piece of this, a taste of that, bacteria and protozoa be damned, ‘this looks particularly enticing’. Once the newness and wonder have worn off, however, we are drawn back to our habitual food ways, and take comfort from the onslaught of foreignness in the tastes that we know.

So we expats, migrants, and immigrants alike, we travel through the world’s airports, suitcases stuffed with cured sausages, runny cheeses, boxes of Kraft Dinner, spices, and teas. We pack up rice makers and load them on the plane. We hide fruit at the bottom of our bags so that we might bring the ones we love a taste of home. We fork over vast sums of money for simple and familiar culinary pleasures, because they mean so much. The tastes we long for tell our stories. They binds us to our homes, and are a reminder of what we love so much.

Which is why expat shops manage to sell stuff at ridiculously inflated prices, I suppose.

Also why the native countrymen of my adopted home regard me as though I have three heads when I treat them to my home cooking …

I agree with you whole-heartedly. Except that pregnancy cannot be a guideline for any taste. I took an aversion to anything microwaved – didn’t matter what – when I was pregnant, and it is an aversion that has stayed with me for twenty-six years.

True, pregnancy is hardly a good time to judge the tastes (or character!!) of any woman, but I think, (maybe just maybe) it does make one’s longings, or childhood, or nascent experiences, or deep-held beliefs a bit louder; bringing them up from the subconscious. Anyway, next time round, I’m making sure that I’m well-stocked with hand-carried Kraft Dinner and Cherrios.

I’m finding that I collect ‘tastes’ on my travels – I still miss Kenyan coffee and the Ranchero burger at the Java Coffee house in Nairobi; I’m always trying to recreate the perfect Eggs Benedict from Kensington High St in London, the house Margarita from Riveria Mexican restaurant in LA.. My travels are more defined by food memories than by souvenirs – probably also because of the people I’ve shared the meals with too.. Maybe that’s why we like to bring those food with us – they not only remind us of home, but of friends and family?

Oh Erica, Erica! You made me laugh because you are Canadian to your bones! When you spoke of a baby’s first finger-food being Cheerios and Ziploc bags (not Ziploc bags as a first food just as a thing on their own!), I could feel the smile spreading across my face.
We quickly noticed the Ziploc bag phenomenon soon after we moved here. They are used for everything! From food items to small things that need transporting, a Ziploc bag is the vessel of choice. Coming from the UK where they’re are more of a rarity and generally employed in a reusable capacity, we were used to seeing them more as an investment than a single use item.
And as for Cheerios, I caught on late to those! I used to carry around dried apple rings (great for teething) and mini rice crackers.
But you’re right, there’s something about food that comforts us on so much more than just a physical level. That bowl of something that takes you back to childhood, that cup of tea brought to you after delivering your child… their tastes transcend the ordinary somehow. A great read! I bet this piece was a husband and wife collaboration btw!

For me, it was living in France and missing sliced bread. Yes, good ole sliced white bread. I could find baguettes, pains au this and that, hand-lovingly constructed triumphs of French baking… but no sliced bread. It probably says more about my cultural taste buds at that time but I was only 15.

Still, I completely sympathise with your need for comfort food from home and am extremely grateful that the Australians share many of the same food tastes as me and mine.

I remember the food failures as much as the successes. I can never look at a package of my beloved m&ms without wondering, for the millionth time, why they taste like cardboard in Singapore. And then I remember the divine chocolates I used to pay shocking amounts of money for in Bordeaux, and I go into a zen-like trance, forgetting all about the m&m travesty. For the moment.

Very true. No matter how excited we are about trying new things when we’re travelling, or how much of the new culture you have assimilated if you’re living abroad – there are moments when you need the food from home.
It works in both directions for me now: whenever I leave the NL, I proudly take cheese and stroopwaffels for my family and friends in Argentina. When I come back to the NL I bring alfajores and sausages or wine from Argentina… ;0